I heard a quote from Billy Graham recently. He told of a time when he was in the hospital very sick, and in his estimation, close to death. He said that he saw his whole life flash before his eyes and in an instant he cried out to God. Calling to the Father he did not claim confidence in his life and tell God that he had been a good preacher and a committed evangelist. No, he said that he was a sinner and that he was still in need of forgiveness, still in need of the cross.
"I am still a man in need of a savior!" I find myself thinking those words more and more often. The declaration has not grown dull over time, having been made empty my the repetition. Instead I find myself unable to come to grips with just how true it is. "Does not God grow weary of me?" The question rings in my skull and I must confess that even now I think that it is true that the Father has good reason for being angry with me. And so I do what I can to earn my way back into hope, trying to make myself feel repentant for my sin. But I know that I will be wandering off before the day closes. The truth is, that I love my sin...and I love the Lord so very little. What I do to mortify the flesh, I do out of fear and guilt, not out of love for the one who loved me first. I am a wretch...and more wretched because even though I know that I am a wretch, I still drink my daily cup of pride and put off repentance for a later day. I have seared my conscience and lost my ability to weep over my sin, except for out of fear or shame.
And yet I still hear the invitation ring out from Calvary. I hear the melody in drops of blood beckoning me to bring even what I am now to the cross. I still turn from such music and say "but it will be insincere, hollow, forced, and out of fear. I will let you down, I will end up right back where I was. I love my sin!" And in return I can still hear him calling out to me, "Child...bring all of that as well".
O how I am still a man in need of the cross! Lord how I cannot, and want not, to sing with my heart "kyrie eleison". And there at the foot of that old rugged tree I hear him whispering "then I will sing it for you..." And even now the music pours out from the very wounds that I have inflicted, and the song in drops of blood cries out to the Father. The voice that beckons me, sings for me.
Now I find myself weeping. I find myself wanting to weep. And I find myself hoping that I will never stop.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Stuck
There is great comfort in knowing that one is not alone in his or her trial. To know that, somewhere, somtime, there was another person who has walked the path you now walk, can be a balm to the depths of the heart. But what happens when we face those mountains that, to the best of our knowledge, have never been crossed. I think that it is there that as a Christian I feel stuck. I am desperate to feel normal, to rejoin the land of the of the "simple walking". I am afraid that I have streched my mind much farther than my faith can hold, and although I am would not call this swamp I now find myself a faith crisis, I would gladly call it a faith sucking vacume.
I long to simply believe again. To be a child in the arms of God agian, is at once my greatest hope and yet a terrible fear. I have spent so long learning about God so that I could teach others, or in order that I may wage a war of words against the skeptic. Yet now I find that I myself am terribly confused and I cannot seem to be able to tell the difference between what I truly believe and that which I want to believe. I want to believe that God is good and that God loves me, and yet oddly enough I find myself unnable to think of what those things really mean. Jargon, it all has muddled down to jargon , like when you say a word so much that it loses its meaning.
I long for what I want, and yet I fear that what I want is not true, and this for no othere reason than because i want it. I want God to be good, and I want God to love me and I want those things to be true in the simple way that I seem to remember.
What it means to follow God is not as simple or as complex as one might think. No, it is more confusing, more grey, and more quiet; very much like the way the world really is. It almost makes sense.
I hope Jesus will hold on to me as it all almost makes sense, for it seems that my faith has rested upon that condition, that things make sense. And so my faith is failing. Yet I hope, and I long to hope.
I long to simply believe again. To be a child in the arms of God agian, is at once my greatest hope and yet a terrible fear. I have spent so long learning about God so that I could teach others, or in order that I may wage a war of words against the skeptic. Yet now I find that I myself am terribly confused and I cannot seem to be able to tell the difference between what I truly believe and that which I want to believe. I want to believe that God is good and that God loves me, and yet oddly enough I find myself unnable to think of what those things really mean. Jargon, it all has muddled down to jargon , like when you say a word so much that it loses its meaning.
I long for what I want, and yet I fear that what I want is not true, and this for no othere reason than because i want it. I want God to be good, and I want God to love me and I want those things to be true in the simple way that I seem to remember.
What it means to follow God is not as simple or as complex as one might think. No, it is more confusing, more grey, and more quiet; very much like the way the world really is. It almost makes sense.
I hope Jesus will hold on to me as it all almost makes sense, for it seems that my faith has rested upon that condition, that things make sense. And so my faith is failing. Yet I hope, and I long to hope.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
To Know Your in the Now
For the Christian the present is the loneliest and most difficult moment to understand. In the past we look upon the great acts of God, and we catch the glimpses of a sovereign plan played out on the passing of history. We look back and we see waters parting, angels speaking and swords flashing; all the drama and power that would be expected of a world in which the eternal Deity acts.
Look towards the future and we find the end of the story. There up ahead lays the satisfaction of all our dreams and the wiping of every tear. Around the bend we catch the echoes of trumpets, the homecoming of all the saints, and the faces of all those whom we have ever loved. One day, all the incoherence of life will be threaded back into the tapestry as one delightful surprise as we see Him with our own eyes.
But the now, the here and now, is quiet and seemingly void of Him who seems so clear in the then and in the later. The monotony of every day carries on and death silently grinds at all our bones. There are no voices from heaven, no battle fields on which the swords of angels cut through wicked men. In the now we as Christians drink in the incoherence of death as those in whom eternal life dwells. In the now, there are no trumpets on heavenly lips to be heard announcing the reign of our King. We live on the silent planet where every man fancies himself a ruler. So how do we as Christians live in the now, what is the answer to this aching question. I don’t know…but I wish I did. The only answer I dare to strain at is not a nice one, but perhaps it is the one I need to hear.
The past and the future require nothing of us. What was…was, and in spite of all our planning, what will be, will in the end… be. But the now requires of us obedience. In the now the Christian finds himself longing for the story that is so clearly seen in the past and in the future, while forgetting all along that the story is unfolding moment by moment. We long to see God as those did then and those who will later. But I think we forget that we are not mere spectators. Why does God seem so quiet now, so far off and unwilling to act? I don’t quite know and it makes me angry that I don’t know.
But I think that somewhere inside me there is this whisper that convicts me of some kind of an answer. For the Christian to know God in the now, it means obedience. Unlike the past and the future I cannot know God in the now as a spectator, but as a slave who would be called a son. Perhaps the Christian is to know God in the now by the dying of self in the every day. How exactly? My mother’s words come to mind. Trust and obey. This is to me an entirely unsatisfactory answer and does not seem to soothe the aching of my soul. But what does it matter, if it is the truth. That being the case, I suppose I will leave the soothing of my heart to Him, and find solace in the fact that the truth that I am to bow to, is also the person that I long to know…here in the now.
For me to live is Christ, to die is gain….
Friday, May 6, 2011
A Bearded Head on Liberty's Pike
I was just heading out the door from work when one of the people I worked with chuckled and then showed me an image on his cell-phone. It was a rendition of Osama Bin Laden's head impaled on the torch of the statue of liberty. The whole scene was subtly bizarre seeing as I am a Christian, the person who showed me the picture was a Christian and we both knew it. I had been listening on the radio about the mixed feeling that have come about due to the assassination of Bin Laden, but it didn't really hit me until I was faced with this event that was a microcosm in my experience of a greater experience that perhaps the whole world is going through, and in particular, the United States. But to hone the point to a sharper edge, one could ask how is an American Christian suppose to respond to this even in history? Am I at liberty to celebrate the death of an enemy, in particular, the death of an enemy that stands as the responsible head for the destruction and calamity that struck the nation which I love, do I allow myself some kind of nationalistic, patriotic glee? Or am I to respond with the remorse of an individual who knows that death is not the end, and that for this man now dead, an eternity of hell may now await him? Do I delight in justice or mourn a life that has been blotted out without knowing Jesus? So there is this tension in my chest between the two.
However I do not think that the questions above are fair. It is here where I think we fail to distinguish people from the ideas that they may stand for. For every person, there is a duality in this world. We live in a world that suffers from hunger and yet, very differently, we also live in a world where people suffer because they are hungry. World hunger is a problem, but over time the very idea of world hunger becomes a thing in itself, disconnected from the lean faces that are starving. Human kind has this radical tendency to think and consider things as concepts and ideas, while allowing the reality behind those ideas to fade into the monotonous particulars. While there are many who would stand against world hunger, there are very few who actually take the time and the personal investment and risk to actually go out and feed those who are hungry. To sit among the destitute and the dirty, to share a meal with those who are withering, is to come very close to a dark reality that we would much rather forget. How can immense resorts dripping with luxury and indulgence stand in countries where there are so many that have nothing? How can certain celebrities waste away their wealth on narcotics and spurious glitz when in that very same city there are those who dig through trash for a gulp on milk? Because hunger as an idea can be dealt with by monthly donations, but the hungry can only be fed by those who would feed them.
This I think is the difficulty with Osama's death. His face and name have become synonymous with the idea of terror, his very identity has been wrapped up in the idea of cruelty and violence, and this justly so. Can we celebrate the demise of such a symbol that represented the violence that shook this country to its core? I believe we can. But are we then at liberty to become dull to the fact that this man was once a child in his mothers arms, and rocked to sleep as she dreamed of all he might be? I do not think that as Christians we are allowed this forgetfulness. Do I personally feel that justice has accomplished its task, yes, but I also believe that justice is a weight that has every right to crush my head as well. I am no less deserving of judgment than Osama was, I stand in mercy because of grace. Did Osama have the same offer of that grace as I have? Yes.
Osama Bin Laden full name actually means "Osama son of Mohammed. son of Avad, son of Laden" It is a genealogy in a name. His own name calls attention to he fact that he was a son, and his own name calls attention to his own father. His own name declares an identity that connects to his father. If only this man had known another man who claimed to be one with His father, and if only Bin Laden had believed that this other man offered all peoples a new name that would declare that we could become sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father. The name Osama actually comes from the word lion, and although I can find joy in justice, I do also believe that our Heavenly father weeps that this lion would not submit to the lamb who was slain so that the lion would not have had to be slain.
If I am the son of my father, if we Christians are not the sons and daughters of our father, are we not able to rejoice in justice, but also weep as our father weeps when any person is lost. Is not the cross clear in that it proclaims that we all deserve death, and yet we may all be made sons and daughters.
I feel the tension in my chest as many in the country do, and I am glad of it. I believe that this tension is there because I am the son of my father.
However I do not think that the questions above are fair. It is here where I think we fail to distinguish people from the ideas that they may stand for. For every person, there is a duality in this world. We live in a world that suffers from hunger and yet, very differently, we also live in a world where people suffer because they are hungry. World hunger is a problem, but over time the very idea of world hunger becomes a thing in itself, disconnected from the lean faces that are starving. Human kind has this radical tendency to think and consider things as concepts and ideas, while allowing the reality behind those ideas to fade into the monotonous particulars. While there are many who would stand against world hunger, there are very few who actually take the time and the personal investment and risk to actually go out and feed those who are hungry. To sit among the destitute and the dirty, to share a meal with those who are withering, is to come very close to a dark reality that we would much rather forget. How can immense resorts dripping with luxury and indulgence stand in countries where there are so many that have nothing? How can certain celebrities waste away their wealth on narcotics and spurious glitz when in that very same city there are those who dig through trash for a gulp on milk? Because hunger as an idea can be dealt with by monthly donations, but the hungry can only be fed by those who would feed them.
This I think is the difficulty with Osama's death. His face and name have become synonymous with the idea of terror, his very identity has been wrapped up in the idea of cruelty and violence, and this justly so. Can we celebrate the demise of such a symbol that represented the violence that shook this country to its core? I believe we can. But are we then at liberty to become dull to the fact that this man was once a child in his mothers arms, and rocked to sleep as she dreamed of all he might be? I do not think that as Christians we are allowed this forgetfulness. Do I personally feel that justice has accomplished its task, yes, but I also believe that justice is a weight that has every right to crush my head as well. I am no less deserving of judgment than Osama was, I stand in mercy because of grace. Did Osama have the same offer of that grace as I have? Yes.
Osama Bin Laden full name actually means "Osama son of Mohammed. son of Avad, son of Laden" It is a genealogy in a name. His own name calls attention to he fact that he was a son, and his own name calls attention to his own father. His own name declares an identity that connects to his father. If only this man had known another man who claimed to be one with His father, and if only Bin Laden had believed that this other man offered all peoples a new name that would declare that we could become sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father. The name Osama actually comes from the word lion, and although I can find joy in justice, I do also believe that our Heavenly father weeps that this lion would not submit to the lamb who was slain so that the lion would not have had to be slain.
If I am the son of my father, if we Christians are not the sons and daughters of our father, are we not able to rejoice in justice, but also weep as our father weeps when any person is lost. Is not the cross clear in that it proclaims that we all deserve death, and yet we may all be made sons and daughters.
I feel the tension in my chest as many in the country do, and I am glad of it. I believe that this tension is there because I am the son of my father.
Friday, March 11, 2011
The Personality of Pain
I must admit that I am one of the very few, and very disturbed people, who do not feel that pinch of pain upon my faith. The reality of suffering in the world does not, for the most part, encroach upon me so as to snuff out my confidence in God. But lets get something straight, this is not because I am in some way superior, no, it is because of the fact that I am unmitigatedly selfish. The suffering of the world does not bare down on my back, no, I am too busy with concern for my own suffering, and when I am not suffering, then pain is not a factor in my life. I have to admit this vice in my own nature, for selfishness is a vice. It is as addicting and gripping as any drug, and yet so much more subtle. I drink of selfishness as one drinks of air. No needle is necessary, and oh wouldn't be great if it were. Then at least I would notice my own intoxication.
However there are other reasons why pain is not an arrow to my hope. At least, that is to say, pain on the collective level of humanity, is no challenge for my belief.
The first reason is that collective suffering has been rendered rather innocuous by my childhood. I grew up as a missionary to third world country. Through out each and every day I was exposed to the harsh realities of the worlds condition. I have seen in my tender years what others have suffered in their tender years, and the shear trauma of the vision is blunted for me. The shock is gone. As I grew up I could take steps in any direction and be at a moments notice within inches of the wretched, the weary and the broken. "They" who ever "they" were, were just a fact of third world countries. The poor, the old, the hungry, "they" were all common in my eyes. I did not feel, as some do, pity for the world because they did not live as "Americans" live, in comfort and unblemished security. Rather, I felt thankful that "I" as an American had been spared from the common condition of the rest of the world. I was not the normal that all others should be made alike, in my security and opportunity, all the rest were the normal and I was for some reason gifted with the blessing and responsibility of being rescued out of the normal to be set somewhere else. I spent little time agonizing over the condition of the masses, and in all honesty, I still spend little time doing so. I can watch the most tragic of advertisements about Haiti and feel little to nothing at all.
But before I am marked as heartless, let me explain. It is utterly true that I, in my childhood and even now, am moved little by the collective pain of humanity, however, it is also true that I am greatly disturbed by the agony of people. I confess, the masses have never moved my soul, and in my little years I was very little bothered by the site of numerous card board shacks, but do remember the faces of those who lived in those shacks, and of all those faces I still think, to this day, about the people I knew personally. I remember the kids that I played with, and the kids that ate with. I remember crying for a man I did not even know, but a man i had met and given food to myself. But I don't just think about those persons of my past. I think of a good friend of mine who struggling through cancer, whose husband is one the kindest gentle men on the planet. I think of my mother, and the life she has had, and the pain she has known in her body and her mind.
This all well and fine you say, that I care about people I know. But its not just that. Give me a face and I will care. There have been times when all I know about someone is their story and their name, and their broken hopes send shots of aching through my bones. What I am trying to say?
I care very little for "world hunger" or for "cancer" or for "world poverty" and I care even less about "world suffering" Let me see the faces of those who are hungry, let me know the name of the person with cancer, and let me see he tears of that person who is suffering. The truth is, there is no such thing as the collective agony of humanity. I do not feel another persons pain, and I cannot feel "world hunger". The only pain that any individual can go threw is the pain he or she can go through. There is no collective pain that one human can suffer for others. I do not know what world hunger is or how it feels, i only knows what it means to be hungry. As one person, I can only know the personality of my own pain, and as much as I attempt to empathize with others, I cannot know what they endure as they know it.
If this good friend of mine were to die and leave her husband alone, my faith would be shaken, and I am not quite sure what I would do to resolve my own questions. If my own wife were to die, I do not know if my faith would stand the blow. But I feel nothing towards cancer or death as a whole, I cannot feel what all people that have gone through cancer have felt. There is not "suffering" out there in the world, there is no "hunger". There are only those who are suffering and those who are hungry. To simply slip them into the congealed label of "evil" or "pain" is to ignore their very personhood, their very dignity and value.
This ultimately means that the only way to understand the suffering in the world, is to bear the incredible weight of allowing every instance of suffering to be understood through an "I" "you" relationship with every person in this world that has suffered, or is suffering, or will suffer. Anything else is a mockery. To coagulate all the tears of every weeping soul into oceans of sadness means absolutely nothing. But to walk from soul to soul and wipe each tear with a tender hand, and look into every face with mercy, means everything. To measure buckets of blood is a futile procedure, an exercise in inhumanity. As if the blood itself, in its quantity, could stand for anything but filth and rot. But to know the pain of every man woman and child individually and personally, as they bled each drop, is an incomprehensible burden that tests the measure of love. To speak of the pain of humanity is to say nothing at all, it is mere rhetoric, but to hold all the pieces of every shattered heart in one grasp, and yet never confuse the puzzle, never mistake what pieces belong to which heart even if the pieces be nothing but dust, is love itself. This is the cross.
This is what the very cross of Christ truly is. Jesus did not just die for the world, He died for you and for me. Jesus did not just suffer on the account of humanity as a collective, but all the sins and all the consequences of sin, suffering, pain, and the like, were placed upon His back, not as one coagulated mass, but as the individual lives of every person that ever lived, that live, and that ever will live. Jesus did that which we could not understand, not just in the atonement, but that God Himself did not spare Himself from all the aching of His world, and neither did He do what we can do in dying for causes. No, Jesus tasted of every single cup of suffering that could every be sipped, not as some whole, but as every single person has ever drank themselves. Jesus drank sip by sip of all the pain that has ever been tasted. He looked out upon all times and said "I die for you, and you, and you, and you, and you," etc. It is true that there is no such thing as the collective suffering as man kind, but it is also true that Jesus personally entered into the pain of every person that might ever suffer. On the cross we see one single individual who suffered, but this suffering also represented what was in the heart of the Father, in that an infinite God is fully capable of feeling the individual agony of every individual, even though there be billions of them.
And the promise still stands that one day God himself will do exactly what we cannot. He will individually wipe every single tear from every eye, not as whole, or as one collective act, but as a personal expression of intimate love, one face, and one tear at a time.
However there are other reasons why pain is not an arrow to my hope. At least, that is to say, pain on the collective level of humanity, is no challenge for my belief.
The first reason is that collective suffering has been rendered rather innocuous by my childhood. I grew up as a missionary to third world country. Through out each and every day I was exposed to the harsh realities of the worlds condition. I have seen in my tender years what others have suffered in their tender years, and the shear trauma of the vision is blunted for me. The shock is gone. As I grew up I could take steps in any direction and be at a moments notice within inches of the wretched, the weary and the broken. "They" who ever "they" were, were just a fact of third world countries. The poor, the old, the hungry, "they" were all common in my eyes. I did not feel, as some do, pity for the world because they did not live as "Americans" live, in comfort and unblemished security. Rather, I felt thankful that "I" as an American had been spared from the common condition of the rest of the world. I was not the normal that all others should be made alike, in my security and opportunity, all the rest were the normal and I was for some reason gifted with the blessing and responsibility of being rescued out of the normal to be set somewhere else. I spent little time agonizing over the condition of the masses, and in all honesty, I still spend little time doing so. I can watch the most tragic of advertisements about Haiti and feel little to nothing at all.
But before I am marked as heartless, let me explain. It is utterly true that I, in my childhood and even now, am moved little by the collective pain of humanity, however, it is also true that I am greatly disturbed by the agony of people. I confess, the masses have never moved my soul, and in my little years I was very little bothered by the site of numerous card board shacks, but do remember the faces of those who lived in those shacks, and of all those faces I still think, to this day, about the people I knew personally. I remember the kids that I played with, and the kids that ate with. I remember crying for a man I did not even know, but a man i had met and given food to myself. But I don't just think about those persons of my past. I think of a good friend of mine who struggling through cancer, whose husband is one the kindest gentle men on the planet. I think of my mother, and the life she has had, and the pain she has known in her body and her mind.
This all well and fine you say, that I care about people I know. But its not just that. Give me a face and I will care. There have been times when all I know about someone is their story and their name, and their broken hopes send shots of aching through my bones. What I am trying to say?
I care very little for "world hunger" or for "cancer" or for "world poverty" and I care even less about "world suffering" Let me see the faces of those who are hungry, let me know the name of the person with cancer, and let me see he tears of that person who is suffering. The truth is, there is no such thing as the collective agony of humanity. I do not feel another persons pain, and I cannot feel "world hunger". The only pain that any individual can go threw is the pain he or she can go through. There is no collective pain that one human can suffer for others. I do not know what world hunger is or how it feels, i only knows what it means to be hungry. As one person, I can only know the personality of my own pain, and as much as I attempt to empathize with others, I cannot know what they endure as they know it.
If this good friend of mine were to die and leave her husband alone, my faith would be shaken, and I am not quite sure what I would do to resolve my own questions. If my own wife were to die, I do not know if my faith would stand the blow. But I feel nothing towards cancer or death as a whole, I cannot feel what all people that have gone through cancer have felt. There is not "suffering" out there in the world, there is no "hunger". There are only those who are suffering and those who are hungry. To simply slip them into the congealed label of "evil" or "pain" is to ignore their very personhood, their very dignity and value.
This ultimately means that the only way to understand the suffering in the world, is to bear the incredible weight of allowing every instance of suffering to be understood through an "I" "you" relationship with every person in this world that has suffered, or is suffering, or will suffer. Anything else is a mockery. To coagulate all the tears of every weeping soul into oceans of sadness means absolutely nothing. But to walk from soul to soul and wipe each tear with a tender hand, and look into every face with mercy, means everything. To measure buckets of blood is a futile procedure, an exercise in inhumanity. As if the blood itself, in its quantity, could stand for anything but filth and rot. But to know the pain of every man woman and child individually and personally, as they bled each drop, is an incomprehensible burden that tests the measure of love. To speak of the pain of humanity is to say nothing at all, it is mere rhetoric, but to hold all the pieces of every shattered heart in one grasp, and yet never confuse the puzzle, never mistake what pieces belong to which heart even if the pieces be nothing but dust, is love itself. This is the cross.
This is what the very cross of Christ truly is. Jesus did not just die for the world, He died for you and for me. Jesus did not just suffer on the account of humanity as a collective, but all the sins and all the consequences of sin, suffering, pain, and the like, were placed upon His back, not as one coagulated mass, but as the individual lives of every person that ever lived, that live, and that ever will live. Jesus did that which we could not understand, not just in the atonement, but that God Himself did not spare Himself from all the aching of His world, and neither did He do what we can do in dying for causes. No, Jesus tasted of every single cup of suffering that could every be sipped, not as some whole, but as every single person has ever drank themselves. Jesus drank sip by sip of all the pain that has ever been tasted. He looked out upon all times and said "I die for you, and you, and you, and you, and you," etc. It is true that there is no such thing as the collective suffering as man kind, but it is also true that Jesus personally entered into the pain of every person that might ever suffer. On the cross we see one single individual who suffered, but this suffering also represented what was in the heart of the Father, in that an infinite God is fully capable of feeling the individual agony of every individual, even though there be billions of them.
And the promise still stands that one day God himself will do exactly what we cannot. He will individually wipe every single tear from every eye, not as whole, or as one collective act, but as a personal expression of intimate love, one face, and one tear at a time.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Happiness on a Knifes's Edge
There is this power in crisis. When everything is going wrong is when I seem to think the clearest. Give me disaster and I know exactly what to do. But for god's sake dont give me the monotony of everyday in which I may find the joy of drinking in the simple routines of life. I am utterly lost in the calm after the storm, so give me the rain and give me the ominous grey of an angry sky. I suppose that I am at home in tradgedy, and I create nothing but tradgedy when I am home. Not that being home is a tradgedy for me. No, I long to be home, I was just never very good and knowing what to do once I got there because I hadn't been there in so long.
Mothers are always smarter than we sons think they are, an abismal understatment I know. It was my mother who first noticed the addiction in me, my dependancy on chaos. She spotted it from miles away, over pizza and lemonade. What is it about women and the way they see the world as it truly is, before they realize that it would be much worse without them? Then when a woman comes to that place of pride and "femminism" knowing that the world would be worse off without them, they seem to loose that second sight. (but now I am wondering off in thought)
There is a certain satisfaction that comes in feeling as though one is doing something that he or she doesnt really have to, a kind of inner praise that fuels the irony of "sacrifitial" ambition. It is the same fuel that drives us to that point of duplicity where we are oddly proud of our humility and are able to point at ourselves and smile. I suppose any fool could do what is impossible if he gets enough praise and drinks in enough admiration. But what does it take to do the generic, the easy and the unnoticed?
I remember a gentleman who knows me, and yet I cannot say that I know anything more of him other than his particular inflection of voice when he would get up infront of the church when I was a child. I remember him reading from a small reddish book of sorts, words that I dont think I will ever forget. For those words are embodied by two other men in my church that diserve their crowns, and yet I know that they will be the first to cast them aside. These are the words:
-It takes the simple strength of man to conquer adversity and rise to heroics in the midst of tradgedy and turmoil. It requires no great power to be remembered, only human ambition.
But it takes the supernatural power of the Living God to live day in and day out in the monotony and drudgery of quiet mornings that turn into quiet evennings. To live such a life as Christ, in all holiness, quiet victory and faithfulness, while knowing all the while that no on will remember, is beyond all flesh. For this, only the power, promises, and faithfulness of God will do. To live a life of death, requires the life that has conquered death. -
There is no better description of what now lays before me. There is no better description of what it means to be a husband.
There is no better description of....what it means to follow
Mothers are always smarter than we sons think they are, an abismal understatment I know. It was my mother who first noticed the addiction in me, my dependancy on chaos. She spotted it from miles away, over pizza and lemonade. What is it about women and the way they see the world as it truly is, before they realize that it would be much worse without them? Then when a woman comes to that place of pride and "femminism" knowing that the world would be worse off without them, they seem to loose that second sight. (but now I am wondering off in thought)
There is a certain satisfaction that comes in feeling as though one is doing something that he or she doesnt really have to, a kind of inner praise that fuels the irony of "sacrifitial" ambition. It is the same fuel that drives us to that point of duplicity where we are oddly proud of our humility and are able to point at ourselves and smile. I suppose any fool could do what is impossible if he gets enough praise and drinks in enough admiration. But what does it take to do the generic, the easy and the unnoticed?
I remember a gentleman who knows me, and yet I cannot say that I know anything more of him other than his particular inflection of voice when he would get up infront of the church when I was a child. I remember him reading from a small reddish book of sorts, words that I dont think I will ever forget. For those words are embodied by two other men in my church that diserve their crowns, and yet I know that they will be the first to cast them aside. These are the words:
-It takes the simple strength of man to conquer adversity and rise to heroics in the midst of tradgedy and turmoil. It requires no great power to be remembered, only human ambition.
But it takes the supernatural power of the Living God to live day in and day out in the monotony and drudgery of quiet mornings that turn into quiet evennings. To live such a life as Christ, in all holiness, quiet victory and faithfulness, while knowing all the while that no on will remember, is beyond all flesh. For this, only the power, promises, and faithfulness of God will do. To live a life of death, requires the life that has conquered death. -
There is no better description of what now lays before me. There is no better description of what it means to be a husband.
There is no better description of....what it means to follow
Monday, January 24, 2011
Love and Marriage
An author once pondered the idea that perhapse marriage was not a means by which we found happines, but a grace of God in which we are made holy. This is in fact more true than I am prepared to be comfortable with. I want my happiness, and I demand my right to attain what I imagine to be the real thing. I want, in some way, a marrige that gives me a world in which I am truly belong and in which I am truly happy, not only with my surroundings, but truly happy with myself. I want a life that has lingered in the eye of my imagination for perhapse too long, almost like the feeling you get when staring out at sea. There in the endless waves, all is clear and wide. The horizon is not brokean by anything, and what lay beyond that horizon is a matter of dreaming. Somewhere out there perhapse there is a better place, a place where I can escape myself and find who I was truly meant to be. The sound of the breaking waves and the cool air on your brow bring such a beautiful longing that it could break your heart to let that longing fully take you.
I find it to be true of marriage that we all look out to the horizon of time and hope in the same way. That perhapse out there somewhere, is a marraige or dream of a marriage that would truly satisfy that longing. Perhapse the dream is real and I have missed it. I have missed the chance, the last boat, to take me away from myself and fall in love with someone who would really make me happy, and make me better. And there are some who break their ties to their first love and venture out upon the waves, and there are those who secretly live another life, as one person in one life and another person in another life. And then there are others who give up and succumb to the erosion of time and dissapointment, slowly loosing all they think they have left.
And yet there are those that come to the place where they know not what to do, and they hurt because of they know not what. There are those who stand at the shore and drink in the sight with their eyes and then turn and head for home, not knowing exactly why. Some are entrenched in stubborness and some are strapped in habbit while others are caged by fear. But there others who are stuck in all the above and yet are compelled by something else to rebel against their stubborness and fight against their habbit and push against their fears, while still walking home.
These are the walking dead. But they shall live again, and live to see the sea in their first's love silver eyes.
I find it to be true of marriage that we all look out to the horizon of time and hope in the same way. That perhapse out there somewhere, is a marraige or dream of a marriage that would truly satisfy that longing. Perhapse the dream is real and I have missed it. I have missed the chance, the last boat, to take me away from myself and fall in love with someone who would really make me happy, and make me better. And there are some who break their ties to their first love and venture out upon the waves, and there are those who secretly live another life, as one person in one life and another person in another life. And then there are others who give up and succumb to the erosion of time and dissapointment, slowly loosing all they think they have left.
And yet there are those that come to the place where they know not what to do, and they hurt because of they know not what. There are those who stand at the shore and drink in the sight with their eyes and then turn and head for home, not knowing exactly why. Some are entrenched in stubborness and some are strapped in habbit while others are caged by fear. But there others who are stuck in all the above and yet are compelled by something else to rebel against their stubborness and fight against their habbit and push against their fears, while still walking home.
These are the walking dead. But they shall live again, and live to see the sea in their first's love silver eyes.
Monday, January 17, 2011
The High of Self Rightieousness
There is a brutal honesty that a Christian must subject his or herself to. It is a painfil exahsting process that exacts of each follower a new death everyday.
31(AG) But if we judged[h] ourselves truly, we would not be judged. 32But when we are judged by the Lord,(AH) we are disciplined[i] so that we may not be(AI) condemned along with the world.
(1 Corinthians 11:31-32 ESV)
23Search me, O God, and know my heart!
(A) Try me and know my thoughts![a]
24And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and(B) lead me in(C) the way everlasting![b]
(Psalm 139:24 ESV)
There is paradox in the Christian. We are each called to scrutinize ourselves with a brutal sincerity, to judge ourselves truly. Yet on the other hand Christ calls us forth with these words,
28(A) Come to(B) me, all who labor and are(C) heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and(D) learn from me, for I am(E) gentle and lowly in heart, and(F) you will find rest for your souls.
(Mathew 11:28-29 ESV)
There is a tension between the agonizing scrutiny and the gentle invitation to rest. We have all felt the weight of and the burden of those moments of where all our faults and belimishes are so clear. I would also risk to say that we have all felt that highstrung feeling in our chest when we are forced to sit back and think, "what am I doing wrong?". Then there is the sweet release of coming to that point where forgivness and compassion is poured out to us. The weight is lifted and that tension fades in a moment of sweet relief.
One does not have to look to far to find a commentator that would condemn any religion or spirituality that causes such cycles of guilt and relief in people. Why adhere to a faith that places such a burden on you, and then turns and calls that burden rest? Why live a life of constant guilt and constant scrutiny? Do we not want life to be free and happy? Do we not want our best life now? Look at the world, at all the problems and all the hungry suffering people. Why spend time on guilt when we could be spending time out there in the ruckus and swing of things?
I dare to answer that question with a drug. Self rightieousness.
What compels me to do what I know is right? I could string together a list of appropriate answers that we have all heard before, and i suppose that they would suffice. But I have to be honest, for a Christian is only worth their weight in truth. You want to know what compels me, the high of self rightieousness. I feel better about myself and I feel important when I do what I think is right. In some wrong headed way, I think it helps me escape from the person I am afraid I am, and I think that it makes up for all the things I have done in the past.
Self rightieousness and the high that it brings, truly is like a drug. Eventually the high wears off and you have to go out and do "better" and "better" things to get that feeling back again. Eventually nothing matters if it doesnt give you that feeling that somehow you have made it, that you diserve to feel good about who you are and that you diserve to expect others to respect who you are.
But what happens when that high wears off, will i still do what i know to be right, or will all my fained goodness fade away? Is that really what it means to follow Christ? I cannot accept that following Jesus is essentially a matter of my own selfishness, and I will not deny that the more I try to follow where Jesus goes, I realize that there is no real goodness of my own.
I must ask the question, will I still do what I know to be pleasing to the heart of God when there is no recognition, no high, no appreciation or greatness? Will I still follow the Lord even when doing so makes no sense, and all it brings me is rejection? Perhapse I will follow after Him if I can look forward to some glorious martyr death, but what if following jesus means nothing for me but the averege monotonous life, day in and day out with no glory, no great battles to be won and a slow march towards a common grave? I dare not say that as I am now, I would still follow Jesus into the monotony of the average midwestern life. I desperatly want to be someone!
There I have said it! I am a selfish, self rightieous hypocrit, Christian. And even now I run the risk of thinking more of my self than I should because I have, at least, admitted what I am, "unlike other people". Even now I am still stuggling to hold on to the last wisps of my own pride. Kaitlin, my dear wife, how you know this to be true.
This scrutiny is unrelenting, and the truth in its findings is undeniable. So I suppose I have nothing left to confess this wretched fact, that I am a wretched sinner. And dont get me wrong, I am not just saying "sinner" in that pious sense that some how gets around the reality of what it means to be dirty, sweaty, smelly, and in real need of a bath.
It is at this point where I am beckoned to come to Christ and to the cross and find my rest at the foot of Calvary. There I am called to die, and to step into that fountain and get the good washing I need. And when I finally come to see what I truly am, His love for me will actully mean more than billboard words, or religous jargon. His love for me will be what compels and comforts me, and His death will be my life. Any addict of a drug will tell that withdrawl can be worse than dying, and that the process of coming off a drug can be agonizing and yet sweet relief. So it is true that to come off of the drug of self rightieousness means death itself and yet in that harsh scrutiny that eluminates the addiction, we also find the voice that calls to us that we may rest. Once we come and die, we will truly live in that rest and the only weight to bare will be the weight of glory and the immesurable burden of God's untatiable love.
31(AG) But if we judged[h] ourselves truly, we would not be judged. 32But when we are judged by the Lord,(AH) we are disciplined[i] so that we may not be(AI) condemned along with the world.
(1 Corinthians 11:31-32 ESV)
23Search me, O God, and know my heart!
(A) Try me and know my thoughts![a]
24And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and(B) lead me in(C) the way everlasting![b]
(Psalm 139:24 ESV)
There is paradox in the Christian. We are each called to scrutinize ourselves with a brutal sincerity, to judge ourselves truly. Yet on the other hand Christ calls us forth with these words,
28(A) Come to(B) me, all who labor and are(C) heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and(D) learn from me, for I am(E) gentle and lowly in heart, and(F) you will find rest for your souls.
(Mathew 11:28-29 ESV)
There is a tension between the agonizing scrutiny and the gentle invitation to rest. We have all felt the weight of and the burden of those moments of where all our faults and belimishes are so clear. I would also risk to say that we have all felt that highstrung feeling in our chest when we are forced to sit back and think, "what am I doing wrong?". Then there is the sweet release of coming to that point where forgivness and compassion is poured out to us. The weight is lifted and that tension fades in a moment of sweet relief.
One does not have to look to far to find a commentator that would condemn any religion or spirituality that causes such cycles of guilt and relief in people. Why adhere to a faith that places such a burden on you, and then turns and calls that burden rest? Why live a life of constant guilt and constant scrutiny? Do we not want life to be free and happy? Do we not want our best life now? Look at the world, at all the problems and all the hungry suffering people. Why spend time on guilt when we could be spending time out there in the ruckus and swing of things?
I dare to answer that question with a drug. Self rightieousness.
What compels me to do what I know is right? I could string together a list of appropriate answers that we have all heard before, and i suppose that they would suffice. But I have to be honest, for a Christian is only worth their weight in truth. You want to know what compels me, the high of self rightieousness. I feel better about myself and I feel important when I do what I think is right. In some wrong headed way, I think it helps me escape from the person I am afraid I am, and I think that it makes up for all the things I have done in the past.
Self rightieousness and the high that it brings, truly is like a drug. Eventually the high wears off and you have to go out and do "better" and "better" things to get that feeling back again. Eventually nothing matters if it doesnt give you that feeling that somehow you have made it, that you diserve to feel good about who you are and that you diserve to expect others to respect who you are.
But what happens when that high wears off, will i still do what i know to be right, or will all my fained goodness fade away? Is that really what it means to follow Christ? I cannot accept that following Jesus is essentially a matter of my own selfishness, and I will not deny that the more I try to follow where Jesus goes, I realize that there is no real goodness of my own.
I must ask the question, will I still do what I know to be pleasing to the heart of God when there is no recognition, no high, no appreciation or greatness? Will I still follow the Lord even when doing so makes no sense, and all it brings me is rejection? Perhapse I will follow after Him if I can look forward to some glorious martyr death, but what if following jesus means nothing for me but the averege monotonous life, day in and day out with no glory, no great battles to be won and a slow march towards a common grave? I dare not say that as I am now, I would still follow Jesus into the monotony of the average midwestern life. I desperatly want to be someone!
There I have said it! I am a selfish, self rightieous hypocrit, Christian. And even now I run the risk of thinking more of my self than I should because I have, at least, admitted what I am, "unlike other people". Even now I am still stuggling to hold on to the last wisps of my own pride. Kaitlin, my dear wife, how you know this to be true.
This scrutiny is unrelenting, and the truth in its findings is undeniable. So I suppose I have nothing left to confess this wretched fact, that I am a wretched sinner. And dont get me wrong, I am not just saying "sinner" in that pious sense that some how gets around the reality of what it means to be dirty, sweaty, smelly, and in real need of a bath.
It is at this point where I am beckoned to come to Christ and to the cross and find my rest at the foot of Calvary. There I am called to die, and to step into that fountain and get the good washing I need. And when I finally come to see what I truly am, His love for me will actully mean more than billboard words, or religous jargon. His love for me will be what compels and comforts me, and His death will be my life. Any addict of a drug will tell that withdrawl can be worse than dying, and that the process of coming off a drug can be agonizing and yet sweet relief. So it is true that to come off of the drug of self rightieousness means death itself and yet in that harsh scrutiny that eluminates the addiction, we also find the voice that calls to us that we may rest. Once we come and die, we will truly live in that rest and the only weight to bare will be the weight of glory and the immesurable burden of God's untatiable love.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The Cause. The Faces. The Christ.
The Cause
We have all seen the commercials. They usually begin with the image of some sad, dark, child's face from a faraway place, as the anouncer tells us about how hungry, or scared, or thirsty that face is. The announcer, once having gripped our emotions, tells us that we can can bring hope that face with just less then two dollars a day, and then the screen is flooded with smiles and school uniforms all brought together by a pleasant melody and finally ended by the 1-800 number. Before you know it, 90 seconds have gone by and our show is back on, as we anxiously await to find out who stabbed the truck driver and who at CSI will figure it out right in the nick of time with that one hair. Maybe we are just waiting to see if maybe this episode Tom Welling will finally put on the red and blue tights, as we try to imagine how on earth he is going to pull off that cape? In any case, that one sad, dark face, will soon be forgotten, and thank heavens, I was almost feeling guilty enough to call that 1-800 number. Thank god for "The Office", and for Dwight.
The above has been my experience in my adult years. My awarness of the pain and destitution of mankind has been limited to pictures, and college student lead fundraisers. Faces have been made into causes, and causes into politics, and politics into points of tension, and points of tension into argument, argument into resentment, resentment to bitteness, and bitterness into anger, apathy, and segregation. Meanwhile, I assume that the face is still somewhere out there, and perhapse that face will grow up to be another human being trapped in the global cycle of corruption and greed, ending in another grave that will soon be forgotten. But, as I said, all this has only been my experience in my adult years. My childhood yeilds different music.
The Faces
I grew up in one of those far off destituted places. I grew up as a missionary kid in Honduras starting when I was six. In my childhood things were very different, because I grew up with those faces, not just that I grew up looking at those faces in person. I mean I actually grew up with those faces. I played in the backyard with those faces, I ate lunch with those faces while bargaining for the last tortilla, I got into fights with those faces, I picked mangos with those faces and I watched those faces grow up as I did with every birthday. I could tell you stories about those faces when they were in 3rd and 4th grade, and I could tell you what kind of homework they did, and what their teachers were like. I could tell you what their parents were like and the fights that they had with their little brothers and what girls they liked. I could show you the card board shack that they used to live in, and I could tell you who's uncle was stabbed to death in his bed just three shacks down. And I could tell you that I never saw a 1-800 number. And you know what else I could tell you?
I could tell you their names. Not just some name that came in a brochure that you put on your fridge, but the names that I learned to pronounce and spell. The names I used to call out while playing soccer, the names I used to pick for my team or the names that used to pick me for their team. Oh yes, I could tell you their names. The names that grew up to be gunned down in the street, the names that went on to be pilots, the names that when on to be civil engineers, or the names that went on to be masons. I could also tell you the names of good friends that I havent seen in years, and that I have learned not to miss and learned to forget.
You see, I could not tell you of a cause or mission. But I could tell you of faces, of people and of names. In my childhood, it was not about world hunger, or world peace, or social justice. It was about Joni, and Luis, and Alfredo, and Javier, and Sandra, and Carlitos, and Dona Rosaria. They were not in need of another ideology, another group of aid workers to come and build a well, deep down they needed more. They needed to believe that they were valuable, that they were truly human just like the Americans, that the ladder of economic segregation that weighed upon them all their lives, meant nothing. They needed food and water and medicine, but they also needed to be real, to be more than an example of poverty and objects of self rightious charity. They desperatly hungered after dignity and identity, individuality and security.
They were not causes. They were and are, mothers and fathers, brothers and friends, faces and names. They had and have ambitions and dreams, goals and plans, hopes and fears. They were not and are not objects to be used so that we may prove our goodness or godliness, or sources of reliefe for our guilt on acount of our selfish lives, and they are not stones tablets for ambitious men and women to write a legacy upon. They are people.
Dont you see that what they hunger for the most we cannot give in the form of a cause. Because we will ever be the almighty giver and they will be the poor helpless receiver of charity. No one wants to be constantly looking upwards for a morsel that will swell the head of the hand that gives it, and degrade the heart of the one who recieves. I do not belittle the aid and need of aid that is spread across this world, but no one like to feel like a charity case. Not for a moment do I think or say, or insinuate that charity is needed any less. I simply make the statment that no one wants to feel small, helpless and dependant on the generosity of another. No one wants to be the object of a cause. Where is the dignity in the begging animal? Where is the dignity in the begging mother? Where is the dignity in reducing faces to statistics and causes?
The Christ
This is where the cause and the Christ come face to face. The Christ did not come to die for the salvation of mankind, He came to die for me. Christ came that I might know Him, that I might know God and that all mankind might be the Bride of the Son. We find that in the Bible the core of our faith is displayed in personal terms. We are adopted as sons and daughters of the Father, we are co-heirs and with Christ and loved by Him beyond all measure and we believe in Him not just His way ("I know whom I have believed"). Even humanity as a collective, or the church as a community is not put in organizational terms but in personal terms. The Church is the Bride of Christ, the beloved. We are not the kingdom of God, but the Kingdom of God is in us. Even truth is elevated to personhood. Christ is the truth and gives himself to us, for even the mysterious power and life of is raised to a relational frame, in that the spirit is also a person and He ministers and lives in us as the life of Christ in us. But it does not end there.
Even the ultimate act of God in Christ for the salvation of the world and the full revelation of all wisdom and insight, is not in some hidden principle or path, but in the cross. Where the person of Christ, the very infinate God, was violated and put to death by human hands. The cross is what it is not becuase it is a symbolic image of what love is, but because if the cross is essentially a relational thing. The cross is what is because of Christ's relationship to the father, Christs relationship to us, and the relatioship that we might have through the father through Christ.
Because we were in a relationship of emnity to the Father because of our sins, Jessus took on human form so that He might fully enter into a relationship not just with our humanity, but with each and every human, and because Christ entered into that position, we were able to lay our hands on the intangible God and crucify Him. Christ did this because He loves us and wanted us to know Him and have a relationship with the father like He Himself did. Because the Son had such a relatioship with the Father, even in Christ humanity, Christ could bear the wrath of the Father for us, and did so because even in the Father's wrath against our sin He still loved us, and thus the Father accepted the Son as the subsitute for humanity. Because of all this, the Father now draws us near in His eternal longing for us, as for the Son, and now we can have a relationship with the Father through our relationship to Christ.
It is all on personal terms, and not in a macrocosm of a cause. You see this is the Gospel that God did not reach down to satiate Himself and His need to be charitable, and He did not reduce humanity to a cause and degrade our dignity by reducing us to objects of charity that would be forever lower and helpless and seprerate. No, God stepped into our place and took on our lowliness that we might take on the inheritence of His Son. He exchanged places with us, not that we might become God, but that we would be given the dignity of God becoming man.
This is where the Gospel truly speaks to social justice, by completely obliterating the concpet. We are all the poor and destituted in God's eyes. All people are made equal and brought down to a common community in that all people are sinners and all people and lost and poor, and yet all peoples are elevated to dignity because Christ died for them all and took on their common humanity. Then even a greater wonder is made clear. Not only did God restore dignity by taking on their common humanity, but then went on to do more than just make humanity an object of His charity and reduce us to wants and needs alone. He actually looked upon us and offered to change places with us, that He would take on our poverty so that we could take on His inheritence.
Let me illustrate this so that we may see it clearly. My parents as they did their mission work did one thing that changed the dynamic of the mission. They did one thing that restored dignity and filled others with value. They lived in the slum among the poor. We did not live in the wort community, but we lived as a american missionaries in a place and in a home that was vastly inferior to many other missionaries we knew. We lived with the people and ate the food they ate. We had them in our living room watching movies and playing sega. We spent time in their homes and talked about the soccer games and the recent election. My parents stepped down into their world not just for working, but for living. We didnt live in everyway like they did, but we did in many ways, and where their were differences, the poor were always welcome to join us. Not only did my parents build wells and sponsor children and make meals, they also embraced and related to those faces as friends and neighbors. In some way, my parents took their place so that those faces might be lifted up and encouraged, loved and sustained. My family stepped into their world so that world could know something different, and for five years we stayed in that world.
My parents did not do this because of some cause, and the people we helped we never a cause to my father or mother. There was no mission to change the world. No social action to improve standards of life. There was my family dusty, sweating, and hot, and they did this becuase they had known the Christ who stepped into their world and did the same for them. This is what impelled my parents to sacrifice their lives, because Christ sacrificed His life for them.
This stepping down, this exchange of places, is how the gospel restores dignity to the poor and the destitute. Christ does not become the almighty non-profit foundation rallying social justice. Christ offers the destitute Himself and offers His life in exchange for thiers. He offers to lift them up, even as Christ is brought down.
This exchange is made known in the cross, and if the cross is not or focus even in social just or social action, then we are failing. For the hungry, Jesus offers His flesh, for the thirsty He offers springs of living water that flow from himself. If we offer bread yet do not offer Christ, if we offer medicine and yet we do not offer the great physician, if we offer a better life and yet we do not offer the way the truth and the life, we have merely postponed the grave, and not truly offered life. If we are impelled by the cause and not the Christ, if we long for change and solutions, and not long for Jesus for His own sake and offer Jesus for His ownsake, then we reduce those faces to objects or to needs and wants. We strip them of their ultimate dignity and humanity, because they are not just needs and wants and objects of charity, they are persons who were made by and made for Jesus and are loved by Him. Ignore this part of the mission and you ignore their very personhood, their very value and their very life.
We have all seen the commercials. They usually begin with the image of some sad, dark, child's face from a faraway place, as the anouncer tells us about how hungry, or scared, or thirsty that face is. The announcer, once having gripped our emotions, tells us that we can can bring hope that face with just less then two dollars a day, and then the screen is flooded with smiles and school uniforms all brought together by a pleasant melody and finally ended by the 1-800 number. Before you know it, 90 seconds have gone by and our show is back on, as we anxiously await to find out who stabbed the truck driver and who at CSI will figure it out right in the nick of time with that one hair. Maybe we are just waiting to see if maybe this episode Tom Welling will finally put on the red and blue tights, as we try to imagine how on earth he is going to pull off that cape? In any case, that one sad, dark face, will soon be forgotten, and thank heavens, I was almost feeling guilty enough to call that 1-800 number. Thank god for "The Office", and for Dwight.
The above has been my experience in my adult years. My awarness of the pain and destitution of mankind has been limited to pictures, and college student lead fundraisers. Faces have been made into causes, and causes into politics, and politics into points of tension, and points of tension into argument, argument into resentment, resentment to bitteness, and bitterness into anger, apathy, and segregation. Meanwhile, I assume that the face is still somewhere out there, and perhapse that face will grow up to be another human being trapped in the global cycle of corruption and greed, ending in another grave that will soon be forgotten. But, as I said, all this has only been my experience in my adult years. My childhood yeilds different music.
The Faces
I grew up in one of those far off destituted places. I grew up as a missionary kid in Honduras starting when I was six. In my childhood things were very different, because I grew up with those faces, not just that I grew up looking at those faces in person. I mean I actually grew up with those faces. I played in the backyard with those faces, I ate lunch with those faces while bargaining for the last tortilla, I got into fights with those faces, I picked mangos with those faces and I watched those faces grow up as I did with every birthday. I could tell you stories about those faces when they were in 3rd and 4th grade, and I could tell you what kind of homework they did, and what their teachers were like. I could tell you what their parents were like and the fights that they had with their little brothers and what girls they liked. I could show you the card board shack that they used to live in, and I could tell you who's uncle was stabbed to death in his bed just three shacks down. And I could tell you that I never saw a 1-800 number. And you know what else I could tell you?
I could tell you their names. Not just some name that came in a brochure that you put on your fridge, but the names that I learned to pronounce and spell. The names I used to call out while playing soccer, the names I used to pick for my team or the names that used to pick me for their team. Oh yes, I could tell you their names. The names that grew up to be gunned down in the street, the names that went on to be pilots, the names that when on to be civil engineers, or the names that went on to be masons. I could also tell you the names of good friends that I havent seen in years, and that I have learned not to miss and learned to forget.
You see, I could not tell you of a cause or mission. But I could tell you of faces, of people and of names. In my childhood, it was not about world hunger, or world peace, or social justice. It was about Joni, and Luis, and Alfredo, and Javier, and Sandra, and Carlitos, and Dona Rosaria. They were not in need of another ideology, another group of aid workers to come and build a well, deep down they needed more. They needed to believe that they were valuable, that they were truly human just like the Americans, that the ladder of economic segregation that weighed upon them all their lives, meant nothing. They needed food and water and medicine, but they also needed to be real, to be more than an example of poverty and objects of self rightious charity. They desperatly hungered after dignity and identity, individuality and security.
They were not causes. They were and are, mothers and fathers, brothers and friends, faces and names. They had and have ambitions and dreams, goals and plans, hopes and fears. They were not and are not objects to be used so that we may prove our goodness or godliness, or sources of reliefe for our guilt on acount of our selfish lives, and they are not stones tablets for ambitious men and women to write a legacy upon. They are people.
Dont you see that what they hunger for the most we cannot give in the form of a cause. Because we will ever be the almighty giver and they will be the poor helpless receiver of charity. No one wants to be constantly looking upwards for a morsel that will swell the head of the hand that gives it, and degrade the heart of the one who recieves. I do not belittle the aid and need of aid that is spread across this world, but no one like to feel like a charity case. Not for a moment do I think or say, or insinuate that charity is needed any less. I simply make the statment that no one wants to feel small, helpless and dependant on the generosity of another. No one wants to be the object of a cause. Where is the dignity in the begging animal? Where is the dignity in the begging mother? Where is the dignity in reducing faces to statistics and causes?
The Christ
This is where the cause and the Christ come face to face. The Christ did not come to die for the salvation of mankind, He came to die for me. Christ came that I might know Him, that I might know God and that all mankind might be the Bride of the Son. We find that in the Bible the core of our faith is displayed in personal terms. We are adopted as sons and daughters of the Father, we are co-heirs and with Christ and loved by Him beyond all measure and we believe in Him not just His way ("I know whom I have believed"). Even humanity as a collective, or the church as a community is not put in organizational terms but in personal terms. The Church is the Bride of Christ, the beloved. We are not the kingdom of God, but the Kingdom of God is in us. Even truth is elevated to personhood. Christ is the truth and gives himself to us, for even the mysterious power and life of is raised to a relational frame, in that the spirit is also a person and He ministers and lives in us as the life of Christ in us. But it does not end there.
Even the ultimate act of God in Christ for the salvation of the world and the full revelation of all wisdom and insight, is not in some hidden principle or path, but in the cross. Where the person of Christ, the very infinate God, was violated and put to death by human hands. The cross is what it is not becuase it is a symbolic image of what love is, but because if the cross is essentially a relational thing. The cross is what is because of Christ's relationship to the father, Christs relationship to us, and the relatioship that we might have through the father through Christ.
Because we were in a relationship of emnity to the Father because of our sins, Jessus took on human form so that He might fully enter into a relationship not just with our humanity, but with each and every human, and because Christ entered into that position, we were able to lay our hands on the intangible God and crucify Him. Christ did this because He loves us and wanted us to know Him and have a relationship with the father like He Himself did. Because the Son had such a relatioship with the Father, even in Christ humanity, Christ could bear the wrath of the Father for us, and did so because even in the Father's wrath against our sin He still loved us, and thus the Father accepted the Son as the subsitute for humanity. Because of all this, the Father now draws us near in His eternal longing for us, as for the Son, and now we can have a relationship with the Father through our relationship to Christ.
It is all on personal terms, and not in a macrocosm of a cause. You see this is the Gospel that God did not reach down to satiate Himself and His need to be charitable, and He did not reduce humanity to a cause and degrade our dignity by reducing us to objects of charity that would be forever lower and helpless and seprerate. No, God stepped into our place and took on our lowliness that we might take on the inheritence of His Son. He exchanged places with us, not that we might become God, but that we would be given the dignity of God becoming man.
This is where the Gospel truly speaks to social justice, by completely obliterating the concpet. We are all the poor and destituted in God's eyes. All people are made equal and brought down to a common community in that all people are sinners and all people and lost and poor, and yet all peoples are elevated to dignity because Christ died for them all and took on their common humanity. Then even a greater wonder is made clear. Not only did God restore dignity by taking on their common humanity, but then went on to do more than just make humanity an object of His charity and reduce us to wants and needs alone. He actually looked upon us and offered to change places with us, that He would take on our poverty so that we could take on His inheritence.
Let me illustrate this so that we may see it clearly. My parents as they did their mission work did one thing that changed the dynamic of the mission. They did one thing that restored dignity and filled others with value. They lived in the slum among the poor. We did not live in the wort community, but we lived as a american missionaries in a place and in a home that was vastly inferior to many other missionaries we knew. We lived with the people and ate the food they ate. We had them in our living room watching movies and playing sega. We spent time in their homes and talked about the soccer games and the recent election. My parents stepped down into their world not just for working, but for living. We didnt live in everyway like they did, but we did in many ways, and where their were differences, the poor were always welcome to join us. Not only did my parents build wells and sponsor children and make meals, they also embraced and related to those faces as friends and neighbors. In some way, my parents took their place so that those faces might be lifted up and encouraged, loved and sustained. My family stepped into their world so that world could know something different, and for five years we stayed in that world.
My parents did not do this because of some cause, and the people we helped we never a cause to my father or mother. There was no mission to change the world. No social action to improve standards of life. There was my family dusty, sweating, and hot, and they did this becuase they had known the Christ who stepped into their world and did the same for them. This is what impelled my parents to sacrifice their lives, because Christ sacrificed His life for them.
This stepping down, this exchange of places, is how the gospel restores dignity to the poor and the destitute. Christ does not become the almighty non-profit foundation rallying social justice. Christ offers the destitute Himself and offers His life in exchange for thiers. He offers to lift them up, even as Christ is brought down.
This exchange is made known in the cross, and if the cross is not or focus even in social just or social action, then we are failing. For the hungry, Jesus offers His flesh, for the thirsty He offers springs of living water that flow from himself. If we offer bread yet do not offer Christ, if we offer medicine and yet we do not offer the great physician, if we offer a better life and yet we do not offer the way the truth and the life, we have merely postponed the grave, and not truly offered life. If we are impelled by the cause and not the Christ, if we long for change and solutions, and not long for Jesus for His own sake and offer Jesus for His ownsake, then we reduce those faces to objects or to needs and wants. We strip them of their ultimate dignity and humanity, because they are not just needs and wants and objects of charity, they are persons who were made by and made for Jesus and are loved by Him. Ignore this part of the mission and you ignore their very personhood, their very value and their very life.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Die
There are moment when all we can do is die. These moments are like storms, not in the raging or torrent, but in the simple reality that we are helpless to split the clouds, helpless to bring the sune back into the sky. We find ourselves sitting in the rain with nothing else to do and no where to go. The rain falls and the dull thuds of each drop mixes in with the cold to compose a voice that seems to capture so well what our own voices cannot speak of, that quiet pain that does not extract from us screams of agony, but weighs us down with an invisible burden. This burden being invisible, intangible and silent, thus cannot be perfectly seen and described by the carrier, lifted up and off by the strongest of human hands, or be cured by a thousand beautiful words. All that can be done, is to sit and wait in the rain, and wait for the clouds to have mercy and release their prisoner, the sky.
These are the moments that beckon us to die. To drink in the rain and embrace the growing chill. This is the hard part. When we come to the end of all that we can do, and yet every thing in our beings tell us to try, to move, to fight, to force the sun to shine by sheer will. Or our being surrenders to the greyness and we sink deep into the water, and we loose ourselves in the dull sound of each breaking drop upon the ground. Nothing..we finally find that we can do nothing close up the shower and bring the color back again. Here is where it is all so very clear, where helplesness becomes the lense through which we see the feeblness of our existence. It is here where what we truly are becomes so clear. We are lost. Wet, tired, cold, and lost. We have come to the end.
Here is the test of Love. Because right there in that place we have made it as far as we need to go, and we need not take another step further, for we have made it to the only place we are meant to find. We have made it to the foot of the cross. All that is left to do is to lay down and die. Rest your head and close your eyes and let the thud, thud, thud, of the drops take you away. Breathe your last breath and surrender. There is nothing left to do, and there is no strength left to fight.
So come and die. Because the promise is, that if you come and die, you will live again, truly live again. And in that life the rain may still be pouring, but you will finally be able to hear the symphony. You will be able to here the music in every drop, you will be able to hear the lulliby of praise in the dripping down of worship from the sky. There you will find that all you heart longs for is to join in, to take your place in that music and sing with each note of falling drops. To raise your hands and drink in the rain, now not as misery, but music. There you will finally find it, finally see it and feel it. The warmth, the light, the brightness and brilliance, the sheen and shine, of the son. And he will lift your weight and fill the silence of that burden with His very love. He will be your light. The son will be your everlasting sun.
And one day soon, the clouds will split and the sky will rend and shutter, the son will come riding in on a brilliant blaze of dawn. And then their will be new music and the rain shall be no more.
You cannot not know what life is there, you cannot see the promise made sure unless you come and die.
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
12 You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
(Isaiah 55:10-12)
If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.
(Mathew 10:39)
23 Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. 24 Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. 25 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
26 He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.
27 The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
(Mathew 8:23-27)
4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
(Revelation 22:4-5)
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
(Revelation 21:3-4)
These are the moments that beckon us to die. To drink in the rain and embrace the growing chill. This is the hard part. When we come to the end of all that we can do, and yet every thing in our beings tell us to try, to move, to fight, to force the sun to shine by sheer will. Or our being surrenders to the greyness and we sink deep into the water, and we loose ourselves in the dull sound of each breaking drop upon the ground. Nothing..we finally find that we can do nothing close up the shower and bring the color back again. Here is where it is all so very clear, where helplesness becomes the lense through which we see the feeblness of our existence. It is here where what we truly are becomes so clear. We are lost. Wet, tired, cold, and lost. We have come to the end.
Here is the test of Love. Because right there in that place we have made it as far as we need to go, and we need not take another step further, for we have made it to the only place we are meant to find. We have made it to the foot of the cross. All that is left to do is to lay down and die. Rest your head and close your eyes and let the thud, thud, thud, of the drops take you away. Breathe your last breath and surrender. There is nothing left to do, and there is no strength left to fight.
So come and die. Because the promise is, that if you come and die, you will live again, truly live again. And in that life the rain may still be pouring, but you will finally be able to hear the symphony. You will be able to here the music in every drop, you will be able to hear the lulliby of praise in the dripping down of worship from the sky. There you will find that all you heart longs for is to join in, to take your place in that music and sing with each note of falling drops. To raise your hands and drink in the rain, now not as misery, but music. There you will finally find it, finally see it and feel it. The warmth, the light, the brightness and brilliance, the sheen and shine, of the son. And he will lift your weight and fill the silence of that burden with His very love. He will be your light. The son will be your everlasting sun.
And one day soon, the clouds will split and the sky will rend and shutter, the son will come riding in on a brilliant blaze of dawn. And then their will be new music and the rain shall be no more.
You cannot not know what life is there, you cannot see the promise made sure unless you come and die.
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
12 You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
(Isaiah 55:10-12)
If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.
(Mathew 10:39)
23 Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. 24 Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. 25 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
26 He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.
27 The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
(Mathew 8:23-27)
4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
(Revelation 22:4-5)
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
(Revelation 21:3-4)
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Human Suffering and the Evicerated Christ
History speaks in a common voice with the present at times, and when this happens it can be saftely assumed that the future will cry with the same voice. There are always exceptions to the rule, but none the less, history does repeat itself. It could be said that humans are players on such a predictable stage, and are of all players the most predictable. There is a common flow in the ebing and undulation of civilizations and nations, as there is a common flow in the personal experience of every individual. If there is one undeniable reality that foists itself upon both the microcosm of the individual and the macrocosm of community, and even on to the cosmos iself, this one reality is suffering.
Whether it is suffering at the hands of others in violence, the internal turmoil of the mind and emotions, the agony of loss or rejection, the pain of disease and decrepidation, or the subtle excrutiation of loneliness and dissapointment, suffering is a reality that cannot be denied. Oh yes, it can be explained through various avenues of thought, and numbed through a myriad of methods, but none the less suffering is there, detected and undeniable. We may quarrel about defentions or origin, but when we suffer whe know it, it is not a thing to be rationally proven, to due so is not necessary, just poke the questioner in the eye and that is all the proof you will need. But let me clear the air of a false assumption of what suffering is. Suffering is not necessarily pain.
Dr. Ravi Zacharias tells the story of little girl born with a disability that inhibits her from feeling pain, or any sensation for that fact, in her physical body. Her parents are always on the gaurd for her, at every moment because this little girl could so easily burn or cut herself, or even bleed out without even knowing it. Her lack of pain is the danger that threatens her life at every corner. This is such a present danger to this child, that her parents spend time every night praying that their little girl would be able to feel pain. Her parents are actually crying out to God that their precious little girl would experience pain. If that little girl could just feel physical pain, than her suffering would be lightened. But let me take this to another extreme.
When studying psychopaths, and I mean real criminal psychopaths who have engaged in serial killing and various other behavior that would be considered un-human, scientists made the discovery that one of the things that creates such behavior is the pychopaths inhability to feel remorse or guilt. The individual here is not actually capable, for whatever reason, be it nature or nuture, to feel guilt or the emotional pain of remorse with which to measure their actions. This in turn creates a state of mind where pleasure can overwhelm the individual becuase pleasure becomes like a drug, in the sense that there is never any guilt to counter act the search for pleasure. If i can experince sexual delight without ever feeling guilt, than anything that brings me sexual satisfaction will be very attractive and there will be very little to disuade me from pursuing that end. I myself may recognize that rape is "bad" but there is nothing within me that truly feels the "badness" and if there is not intensity of remorse or pain in guilt to counteract the intensity of that sexual pleasure, then the pleasure itself becomes absolutely overwhelming like a drug that takes control. Just like a real drug, the intensity of the pleasure dulls over repetition, and soon there is a desire for better and better high, therefore when rape no longer provides the high, the psychopath moves to other actions like an adict may move towards higher doeses of a drug or stronger drugs. This individual is in desperate need of feeling emotional pain in the form of remorse and guilt, it is exactly that kind of internal turmoil that one would wich for the individual. This psychopath suffers much, and his exclusion from a healthy part of community is just one part of that suffering. If only that individual could feel intense emotional agony in guilt.
One could also consider those who study psychopaths who are criminals and the condition of their own psychology. Many criminal pathologists have experienced moments of intense suffering when they begin to realize that they actually have begun to feel nothing towards the victims. Their job requires them to adjust so much to the gruesome reality of mutilation and violence that over time a numbness sets in. For some in that kind of work, they express an imense amound of suffering that comes from feeling nothing, from being numb, from being able to look upon a mutilated victim, and feel very little and yet know that should be horrified and are not.
There are many examples that could be used, but the point is clear. Suffering may be painful, but suffering may also be caused by an utter lack of pain.
It is here where humanity's suffering must be put into perspective. Our ultimate suffering in the eyes of God begins somewhere rather unexpected. When humanity can look upon the cross and feel nothing, no pain or remorse or guilt, it is then that God declares that we are truly suffering. For you see, the little girl who has no physical sensation in her body cannot feel pain but she can also not feel her mothers kisses or her fathers arms. The psychopath cannot feel guilt or remorse, but he also cannot feel the full nature of his hummanity and the community he has with other humans because of this shared humanity, he cannot imagine another person's pain and empathise, because he has no pain. The criminal pathologist may be able to look upon an evicerated corpse without horror, but how then will he look upon his sleeping children at home, for if he opend himself up to feel for those little feet and littel toes, does he not open himself up to feel for those feet and those toes sticking out from under the white mortuary cloth?
When humanity can look upon the evicerated Christ of the cross and feel no pain or agony of guilt, then we are truly suffering in God's eyes, for then we also close ourself off from the glory and promise of the ressurection of that Christ, in which we are drawn into the love and relationship, communion and confort, and the arms and touch of God Himself. That is the perspective of God, and that is what He declares as ultimate suffering...a lack of pain and agony and remorse in our very being, at the foot of the cross.
Whether it is suffering at the hands of others in violence, the internal turmoil of the mind and emotions, the agony of loss or rejection, the pain of disease and decrepidation, or the subtle excrutiation of loneliness and dissapointment, suffering is a reality that cannot be denied. Oh yes, it can be explained through various avenues of thought, and numbed through a myriad of methods, but none the less suffering is there, detected and undeniable. We may quarrel about defentions or origin, but when we suffer whe know it, it is not a thing to be rationally proven, to due so is not necessary, just poke the questioner in the eye and that is all the proof you will need. But let me clear the air of a false assumption of what suffering is. Suffering is not necessarily pain.
Dr. Ravi Zacharias tells the story of little girl born with a disability that inhibits her from feeling pain, or any sensation for that fact, in her physical body. Her parents are always on the gaurd for her, at every moment because this little girl could so easily burn or cut herself, or even bleed out without even knowing it. Her lack of pain is the danger that threatens her life at every corner. This is such a present danger to this child, that her parents spend time every night praying that their little girl would be able to feel pain. Her parents are actually crying out to God that their precious little girl would experience pain. If that little girl could just feel physical pain, than her suffering would be lightened. But let me take this to another extreme.
When studying psychopaths, and I mean real criminal psychopaths who have engaged in serial killing and various other behavior that would be considered un-human, scientists made the discovery that one of the things that creates such behavior is the pychopaths inhability to feel remorse or guilt. The individual here is not actually capable, for whatever reason, be it nature or nuture, to feel guilt or the emotional pain of remorse with which to measure their actions. This in turn creates a state of mind where pleasure can overwhelm the individual becuase pleasure becomes like a drug, in the sense that there is never any guilt to counter act the search for pleasure. If i can experince sexual delight without ever feeling guilt, than anything that brings me sexual satisfaction will be very attractive and there will be very little to disuade me from pursuing that end. I myself may recognize that rape is "bad" but there is nothing within me that truly feels the "badness" and if there is not intensity of remorse or pain in guilt to counteract the intensity of that sexual pleasure, then the pleasure itself becomes absolutely overwhelming like a drug that takes control. Just like a real drug, the intensity of the pleasure dulls over repetition, and soon there is a desire for better and better high, therefore when rape no longer provides the high, the psychopath moves to other actions like an adict may move towards higher doeses of a drug or stronger drugs. This individual is in desperate need of feeling emotional pain in the form of remorse and guilt, it is exactly that kind of internal turmoil that one would wich for the individual. This psychopath suffers much, and his exclusion from a healthy part of community is just one part of that suffering. If only that individual could feel intense emotional agony in guilt.
One could also consider those who study psychopaths who are criminals and the condition of their own psychology. Many criminal pathologists have experienced moments of intense suffering when they begin to realize that they actually have begun to feel nothing towards the victims. Their job requires them to adjust so much to the gruesome reality of mutilation and violence that over time a numbness sets in. For some in that kind of work, they express an imense amound of suffering that comes from feeling nothing, from being numb, from being able to look upon a mutilated victim, and feel very little and yet know that should be horrified and are not.
There are many examples that could be used, but the point is clear. Suffering may be painful, but suffering may also be caused by an utter lack of pain.
It is here where humanity's suffering must be put into perspective. Our ultimate suffering in the eyes of God begins somewhere rather unexpected. When humanity can look upon the cross and feel nothing, no pain or remorse or guilt, it is then that God declares that we are truly suffering. For you see, the little girl who has no physical sensation in her body cannot feel pain but she can also not feel her mothers kisses or her fathers arms. The psychopath cannot feel guilt or remorse, but he also cannot feel the full nature of his hummanity and the community he has with other humans because of this shared humanity, he cannot imagine another person's pain and empathise, because he has no pain. The criminal pathologist may be able to look upon an evicerated corpse without horror, but how then will he look upon his sleeping children at home, for if he opend himself up to feel for those little feet and littel toes, does he not open himself up to feel for those feet and those toes sticking out from under the white mortuary cloth?
When humanity can look upon the evicerated Christ of the cross and feel no pain or agony of guilt, then we are truly suffering in God's eyes, for then we also close ourself off from the glory and promise of the ressurection of that Christ, in which we are drawn into the love and relationship, communion and confort, and the arms and touch of God Himself. That is the perspective of God, and that is what He declares as ultimate suffering...a lack of pain and agony and remorse in our very being, at the foot of the cross.
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